OT - COVID and residential real estate

GrateEggspectations

CTMike said:

My son and daughter-in-law close on their townhome in Ottawa mid-May. When they signed the contract (Oct19) the price was CAD$479K. Current price for the same unit is now CAD$650K - crazy. The single family homes in the same development went from mid 600s to high 900s in the same time frame.

Congrats to them. Seems like they had good timing. What part of the city are they in? 

As you probably know, Ottawa is leading the country in terms of growth right now, so a very competitive market for buyers. When the bubble does burst, I suspect Ottawa won’t be hit as hard; historically, it has been a very stable market . 

CTMike

They are south of the city in Cowan’s Grove development by HN Homes. 

alaskanassasin

lots of moving and shaking going on out there.

YukonRon

JohnInCarolina said:

The other thing that we have seen happen to us here in Durham that is new, is that we are receiving unsolicited inquiries from agents representing interested buyers.  They are asking if we'd consider selling our home, even though it is not on the market.  Anyone else seeing that?  

We have been 3x this month (9 days)

nolaegghead

The big winners here are all the people who didn't buy and the real estate agents.

GrateEggspectations

CTMike said:

They are south of the city in Cowan’s Grove development by HN Homes. 

Neat spot. Greely, just South of them, has picked up big-time steam, real-estate wise. I am just about 20 mins due North of them. A lot of my in-laws are in the South end of the city. Great spot. 

WeberWho

I picked up a used smoker this evening and did some small talk with the previous owner. It turns out he owns the local lumberyard in town. I asked him how things were going. He said they're swamped right now. Everything is on a wait and even he can't believe what people are paying for lumber right now. He says it's all because of the loans and mortgage rates being offered. They can't keep up. 

RyanStl

stlcharcoal said:

fishlessman said:

. i dont even know why anyone would list their house with a realtor right now. 

"Because most of the deals would never actually close.....and that's the important part.

The way I describe real estate deals is every one of them is like an episode of Star Trek.  The are inviting and happy in the first 5 minutes, then the rest of the episode the Enterprise/ deal is 5 seconds for blowing up.   Seriously, in 10 yrs I have had a handful of deals that have been effortless--the rest all nearly fell apart over something and I had to work my butt off to save them before they did.

Inspections, septic/well, appraisal, title, survey, loan commitment, etc.  Striking a deal on a price is only the beginning......there are still about 100 ways for the buyer to bail WITH their earnest money, wasting weeks of the seller's time on market.  

Realtors, unlike lawyers, do not benefit from the two parties fighting.  We don't get to bill by the hour, we ONLY get paid if the deal closes.  Our job is to keep the deal together while protecting our side.

Sellers can bring too much emotion into the deal--because it's their "home".  No it's a "house" at that point and we want to market it as the buyer's new "home".  Not semantics, state of mind--it's nothing more than an asset.  It's our job to keep emotion out of it.

A good Realtor will always pay for themselves by holding the deal together and/or getting 5-6% over what you would have gotten trying to do it all on your own." 

I toyed with the idea of for sale by owner, but you are right. For one our realtor had so much more knowledge of the house we just bought by working with the seller agent.  She also knew how to price and go about selling our house and coordinating both transactions.  The whole deal went without one issue.

We made the decision to move on January 31st and closed on March 2nd. The whole thing went so fast.

As far as prices, I sold my house with one weekend of showings and got asking price. The asking price was almost 10% higher than the appraisal I had a year prior.